Tuesday, June 10, 2014

He says this "If I get a video camera and place it in a room and turn it on and lock the door, then come back the next day there will be footage on the tape of the room yet no human observer was present. You seem to be saying that nothing exists outside of subjective experience (consciousness). So how do you explain this? It’s clear that an objective material world exists outside of consciousness. The videotape experiment easily demonstrates this".

A clear refutation is found here as I quote from physicist Andre Linde

"A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device? In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us. It's not enough for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to anybody. It's necessary for somebody to look at it. You need an observer who looks at the universe. In the absence of observers, our universe is dead".

Saturday, June 7, 2014

The first part will be from me the second part all credit goes to user named Ben Steigmann. First the argument that muscle reading can explain Mrs. Piper's readings and thought transference.

I don’t think telepathy had nothing to do with it. This link I will have down before clearly points out that muscle reading has been shown to be inadequate to explain Piper’s readings. Here is a small sample of what Ben Steigmann had to say:

The following shows intellectual dishonesty on the part of McCabe and Rational Wiki (and also the wikipedia article on Myers, which was obviously edited by the same person who put in the info on Rational Wiki):
Part of the Rational Wiki article on Frederic Myers is an attempt to attack him on his sexual activities, including vague allegations of sexual relations with mediums biasing his arguments. Then we come upon this misrepresentative assault (this version is from the Rational Wiki article on Myers as of November 14, 2013, 1:03 PST):
"The skeptic Joseph McCabe discovered false information in Myers book Phantasms of the Living (1886) a book which documented anecdotal experiences of apparitions and phantasms. Myers included an alleged "personal experience" by a retired Judge Edmund Hornby involving a visitation from a spirit, however the whole thing was a hoax and Hornby admitted there was no truth in it. Myers did not do proper research on the subject."
The reality is quite different, and when we conduct a full investigation into this, we gain extreme doubt that the RW coverage of spiritualism or any other subject they don't like is in any way reliable or, in the cases where they may accurately cite sources, if it is in any way objective. As follows:
First, McCabe did repeat such insinuations, but not in the manner alleging that Myers made things up, as RW editors defamatorily insinuate. He states of Edmund Hornby that he "could only mutter that he did not understand his own mistake": https://archive.org/stream/isspiritualismba00mccarich#page/98/mode/2up
Doing relevant primary source research we find, when we come upon commentary concerning this and the argument of Balfour that McCabe cites against this anecdote (The Nineteenth Century, Volume 16, p. 851: http://books.google.com/books?id=K9YaAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA75&dq=Visible+apparitions.+Nineteenth+century+1884&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6huFUpefBOOrjAL4g4GIBw&sqi=2&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=courtesy%20in%20sending%20me%20Mr.%20Balfour%27s%20letter&f=false) - you may have to scroll down to the correct page, that Hornby's defense against the assertions of Balfour, showing that even if the story can be disputed, Myers did not fabricate information - and also that McCabe gave a MARKEDLY BIASED presentation that did not represent the substance of the argument - Hornby did not state "that he did not understand his own mistake", but instead, Hornby directly challenges Balfour. He may be wrong, but the fact is that tone of the RW towards Myers on this is over the top (allegations of false information - implying he fabricated it, rather than contentious information - the assertion is that Hornby stated that there was no truth in it, such an assertion ignores his statement "If I had not believed, as I still believe, that every word of it [the story] was accurate, and that my memory was to be relied on, I should not have ever told it as a personal experience.")
Regarding Myers and his sexual activities - possibly he did have an affair with Freer. Possibly he didn't. In McLuhan's mental mediums document he provides the following citation regarding other allegations r.e. Myers: Gauld, Alan & Salter, W.H. FREDERIC MYERS AND ‘PHYLLIS’, Journal 42, 1963-64, pp. 316-24. Defences of Myers against an attack on his integrity regarding his relationship with Annie Marshall.
See also Journal 43, pp. 277-81. CC/MM/s-test
The point is that no proof is given that he faked evidence. What has just been proven is that debunkers faked evidence against him.

All credit to Ben Steigmann in his excellent rebuttals on skeptic arguments against mediums. You can read all the other comments in made here at the link below. Midnightrunner a user on the Neurologica blog mentioned that, Ben is into conspiracy theories. Well I ain't into conspiracy theories at all but, Midnightrunner is using that as a way to counter all the arguments he made refuting skeptical arguments against medium Leonora Piper.

The source of the comments can be found here. http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/2013/12/there-probably-is-an-afterlife.html.